Quest for an Even Keel

The last six weeks have been a rollercoaster and I really don't think my feet are properly back on the ground yet.

In the middle of July I did a week-long poetry workshop with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke at Ty Newydd in Wales. It was just as inspiring and challenging as you'd expect, working with creative tutors and talented participants. I did an Arvon course with Carol Ann two years ago at Moniack Mhor and it took me about six weeks to get back to normal after that, so I did know what to expect. Even so, such an intense and wonderful experience still takes quite a while to come down from afterwards.

Hot on the heels of that, we went off on holiday to Mallorca. We haven't been abroad for three years, so that was another exciting experience, and challenging in its way as I'm not the world's most confident flyer.

The hotel we stayed in had a proper swimming pool - 25m long and 2.6m deep at the deep end. I had the blissful luxury of being able to swim outside - 1K or more nearly every day for 10 days. Given half a chance I think I could get used to that lifestyle...eating, swimming, reading books. Ahhhh dream on.....

Fish out of Water

No blog for two weeks and no swim for almost three. What's going on?

Three weeks ago I had food poisoning. Now I feel tired and out of condition. My joints ache, particularly my knees and ankles. I have pain in my sinuses and face, or worse still, could it be my teeth? 

My husband suggested (kindly) that I've been out of the water too long. I think he's probably right, so tomorrow I'll get back in the pool and see if that helps.

Here's a poem about water by Gillian Clarke to put me in the mood.

The Water-Diviner

His fingers tell water like prayer.

He hears its voice in the silence

through fifty feet of rock

on an afternoon dumb with drought.

Under an old tin bath, a stone,

an upturned can, his copper pipe

glints with discovery. We dip our hose

deep into the dark, sucking its dryness,

till suddenly the water answers,

not the little sound we know,

but a thorough bass too deep

for the naked ear, shouts through the hose

a word we could not say, or spell, or remember,

something like 'dwr...dwr'.

Gillian Clarke

from Sixty Women Poets (ed. Linda France), Bloodaxe.